1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the present invention relate generally to semiconductor devices, semiconductor logic devices, transistors, magnetic materials, and integrated circuits.
2. Background Information
The desire for ever-smaller integrated circuits (IC) devices places enormous demands on the techniques and materials used to construct the devices. In general, an integrated circuit chip is also known as a microchip, a silicon chip, or a chip. IC chips are found in a variety of common devices, such as the microprocessors in computers, cars, televisions, CD players, and cellular phones. A plurality of IC chips are typically built on a silicon wafer (a thin silicon disk, having a diameter, for example, of 300 mm) and after processing the wafer is diced apart to create individual chips. A 1 cm2 IC chip having feature sizes around of about 90 nm can comprise hundreds of millions of components. Current technologies are pushing feature sizes even smaller than 45 nm.
Components of conventional IC chips include solid-state logic devices (transistors) such as CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) devices that form, for example, logic gates. Generally, computing devices associate a computational state (information) with electronic charge. Logic operations within the computing device are then performed by manipulating, detecting, and storing electronic charges.